Saturday, July 24, 2010

PrBoom is a version of the classic fps game Doom by id Software. Specifically, it's an engine for playing Doom levels, based on the source code released by id Software. It aims to be free, reliable, portable, and support a wide range of levels.

PrBoom is the culmination of years of work by various people and projects on the Doom source code. PrBoom includes work from all of the following projects:

Original Doom source release

Without id Software releasing the source code to Doom in the first place, we couldn't be here. And one mustn't forget Bernd Kreimeier who prepared the source for release.

DosDoom

The first serious Doom port, got things working enough for other projects to spawn from it. Also continued to provide a lot of innovative ideas for other ports.

Boom

This project gave a complete overhaul to the Doom engine, one it badly needed. All of Doom's infamous bugs and limitations were fixed. Many new features which fitted nicely into the engine were added, including a better line types system, translucency, friction and wind types, and much more.

PrBoom

Brought Boom to Windows, and made large improvements to the graphics: first higher resolutions, later OpenGL rendering.

MBF

This continuation of the Boom project, by Lee Killough, did huge amounts of debugging and other improvements, as well as adding more natural features in the way that Boom had done. There were also some special features like Doom beta emulation, and friendly monsters.

LxDoom

Initially just a Linux port of Boom, it went on to become a portable POSIX Doom port, with further compatibility improvements and debugging.

lSDLDoom

This port of LxDoom to SDL brought the Windows and Linux development back together. It just makes you wish we'd had SDL when the Doom source first came out :-\.

Of course ideas were exchanged with many other Doom ports, including xdoom, and Eternity.